Hermes Partnership: strengthening wireless communications research

Without doubt wireless radio transmission and networks are the pillars of today's state of art in ICT technologies. Leading European research institutions, universities and industries strengthen their efforts by cooperation in the Hermes Partnership. The partnership operates as an European Centre of Excellence and offers the members a platform for in-depth scientific discussions on themes as wireless communications, network technologies, future internet and network infrastructures, Internet of Things (IoT), Personal Networks, Body Area Networks, Bio-inspired communications, Nano communications, future radio including Tera Herz technology, etc.

Hermes Partnership's involvement in Body Area Networks (BAN)

The use of wearable’s and body sensor devices is rapidly growing in the Internet of Things (IoT). At the same time, digital health, a convergence of digital technologies and health (Wikipedia), is emerging.

Research carried out by Hermes Partners was brought into a workshop organized by Hermes at the occasion of BodyNets 2012, Oslo, Norway. This was the start of broader academic research in this area by multiple European researchers under the working name "SmartBAN". In march 2013 the inititative was approved by ETSI as a Technical Committee.

The objective of this special issue is to define the framework of the 6th generation of communication networks, its services and break-through technologies. We are soliciting original contributions that have not been published and are not currently under consideration by any other journals. Particular emphasis is placed on radically new concepts and ideas which are not just an evolution of 5G technologies. The topics of interest include, but not limited to:

Key drivers and 6G requirements

New wireless backhaul and fronthaul solutions

New security concepts

Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into new wireless systems solutions and applications

Innovative applications

New network architectures

Concepts and technologies to harness new spectrum

New energy harvesting technologies, and integration into mobile network architectures

Techniques to improve energy efficiency

New approaches to simultaneously increase peak data rates and data density not only in urban environments

New system architectures stemming from the from the combination of computing, communication and storage

Breakthrough technologies and concepts

Follow-up H2020

June 7, 2018, The commission has made public follow-up initiatives for H2020 which will be active from 2021. Please find hereunder links to relevant information.

Hermes partner Ingrid Moerman (University of Ghent/ IMEC, together with Steven Latré (University of Antwerp/ IMEC) both active in the IMEC IDLab, have received a research grant of $ 750.000 for outstanding performance of their Software Defined Radio developments in the DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge.

DARPA wants to solve the problem of utilizing the finite amount of radio spectrum available in the most efficient way possible, using machine intelligence. DARPA hopes the challenge inspires teams to find methods that will let devices manage their use of the spectrum autonomously in the face of those exponentially growing concerns.

The traditional methods of spectrum management, where radio frequency ranges are chopped into sections and set aside for specific uses, isn’t enough to keep up with the number of devices sending signals these days. More advanced spectrum management is needed.

Autonomous management by the transmitting devices will hopefully solve this problem by training machines to listen for open frequencies in the constant noise of transmissions all around them and only sending their own signals when a window opens up. Self-learning algorithms have to be developed for this application. The competition included real time tests at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, MD, USA.

above: the winning team

In total 19 teams demonstrated their software defined radio (SDR) designs. The ten best performing teams were awarded with $ 750.000 to improve their radio technology in follow-up research.